CHAPTER THREE
Each day, the weather seemed more gloomy. Each day, the rain came down harder and harder. But no zombies appeared in sight of the prison gates until about the seventh day after the inmates secured the gates and got the weapons. This first example of living dead staggered out from the woods on the side of the road leading up to the gates. It looked like it had come right out of the morgue drawer if it hadn't been the condition the walking corpse was in.
Shafts of light passed through the bullet holes littering the chest and shoulder of the zombie and it looked malnourished. Danny stared at it through the binoculars he'd found in one of the guard towers, watching from the tower itself. It was a disgusting sight, to be sure. The zombie seemed to sense him and raised a bloody hand towards the prison a half-mile away.
Danny lowered the binoculars and nodded to Richy Rich, who was standing beside him. It had been agreed that they would train on shooting by firing at zombies. The former drug lord raised one of the bolt-action rifles that the guards had used and aimed through the scope at the distant zombie. He squeezed the trigger, and the rifle roared and jerked, dust puffing up ten feet in front of the zombie where the slug hit. Danny sighed and nodded again, this time to Roger, who was next in line.
Roger grunted, aiming very carefully and pulled the trigger, his own bolt-action rifle barking as it fired and shot the zombie in the knee. It stumbled and nearly fell but kept coming, dragging its now-useless left leg. Roger cursed and began reloading while Willie, the next in line, expertly took aim.
The trained hitman fired and the bullet entered the zombie's chest, pushing it backwards and it fell, laying motionless in the muddy street. The prisoners all cheered and Willie gave a rare, almost-toothless smile. Danny smiled and looked through the binoculars to confirm the kill but the zombie was already sitting up, blood pouring out of the bullet-hole. "That's fucked up," he whispered, then had an idea and raised his voice. "Aim for the head, you guys."
The walking cadaver got back to its shoeless feet and came on towards the prison mindlessly, its haunting moans carrying to the inmate would-be sharpshooters on the rain-smelling wind. Jonah aimed his rifle as carefully as he could, hands trembling nervously, and set the sights between the zombie's blank, rotting eyes. He blew its head into two and the cons cheered him and he grinned widely.
Danny clapped him on the back proudly. "You guys are doing me good by showing some improvement for a change." His smile faded after those brief encouraging words and he got grim. "Just don't forget that we're on our own. We've got to make the best of it. We have to hold out. When the zombies come and we're actually shooting to save our very lives, it's going to be nothing like that calm shot Jonah took. It's going to be hectic and chaotic as fuck. So train on some fast head shots because there are definitely gonna be more zombies coming today. Let's go maggots."
With that, Danny moved away from the shooters and stood at the other side of the tower where Cora was kneeling beside Allie and trying to get the catatonic woman to respond to something. The psychiatrist looked up from her makeshift 'patient' when his shadow fell over her. "She's been having seizures and all kinds of stuff. Spouting gibberish about being a weakling. The brutal murder of that pedophile right in front of our cell might not have helped too much, either." Cora was staring at Danny accusingly as if it was all somehow his fault for killing Rossiter and saving her life.
"She's okay," the convict replied, seeming to shrug it off. "She hasn't been doing time here like us prisoners. She's just a whiny bitch."
Cora seemed to stare right through his tough exterior into his soul. "We still have to get some medicine for her. The guards looted my storeroom. We have to go into the nearest town. We need food and water supplies anyways. We can't live on this prison gunk forever and you know it."
Danny sighed very deeply, rubbing his weary eyes and staring out toward the distant dots of zombies approaching the prison in small -- but growing -- clumps and groups. "You're gonna be the death of me, woman," he muttered to himself, but loud enough that he knew she could hear as well. "Sometimes a man can just tell."
--
Danny figured their mission had a fifty-percent chance of survival so he wasn't going to take the whole contingent of defenders with him. Just himself, Cora, Roger, Willie and Jonah, and he left Richy Rich in charge of the others back at the prison because he believed the man was loyal and true.
The pointlbank shotgun blast was disastrous, inflicting a close-range abdominal wound to the zombie that sustained it. Already clinically dead, of course, the undead heathen just stumbled backwards with the force of the gun blast, rotten entrails splattering every which way. Staring blankly at the firer of the shot through a pair of cracked and blood-flecked pair of glasses, the zombie kept coming.
Planting his feet solidly, Jonah aimed the shotgun carefully at the dark form staggering toward him. "Vaya con dios," he whispered grimly, squeezing the trigger. The zombie toppled finally dead, a fountain of blood gushing from the remnants of its face. Danny clapped Jonah proudly on the shoulder and complimented his good shooting.
The small foraging party had been moving through the dark countryside outside the prison in this same manner for about an hour now, and they had gotten a fair distance before encountering a zombie but even when they did find the occasional walker, they were few and far between. Morale was high and they were joking with each other while they downed zombies, as if the majority of them weren't rapists or murderers and stuck in a zombie apocalypse.
But as they got closer to the town of Rutledgeville, about two miles away from the prison itself, the mood got more grim. The logical thought going through their heads was that when they neared a town, there'd be more and more zombies because most of the citizens would be zombified by then. There was no rain, no thunder, no noise at all as the survivors quietly stalked through the overgrown sugarcane fields around the small town.
Everything seemed to be going good . . . It looked like they'd be able to just sneak into town, get the food, get the meds, and get the fuck out . . . Until Jonah's foot was grabbed by a legless zombie crawling among the tall grass, and he screamed, flinched and fired his shotgun instictively right ahead . . . right into Willie's back, then another quick blast into the zombie's forehead but it was too late for Willie. Everything had gone to hell in a single moment's space of time . . .
Willie fell face first in the mud, shrieking in horrible pain. Meanwhile, zombies started moaning from the nearby town and all around in the fields. Cora just stood there, frozen in fear and horror as Roger raised his rifle and began banging off shots at the closest zombies. Danny did the same, while Jonah stared down at the writhing form of Willie with an odd look of . . . satisfaction?
"He's still alive," Cora let out in a choked gasp. "We've gotta . . . We've gotta get him out of here. Can't just leave him laying here for those things to get." She looked into Danny's eyes, catching his gaze. "You saved me. Save Willie.
He kept her gaze for a long second before breaking it away. "I owe you one. Not Willie Kiger." Danny inwardly groaned. Willie was a good guy, but they couldn't drag him along with them if he was that badly wounded, could they? He was going to die anyways, right? Right?
"God damn you all to hell," Willie snarled, vomiting blood and puke all over the ground in front of him as he grabbed vengefully at Jonah's leg, huffing and puffing with the effort of not sobbing. "You fatass. You killed me, you little prick. I'm gonna come back as a zombie and bite a big chunk out of your big ass."
Cursing, Danny met Roger's eyes and the man nodded, continuing to fire into the zombies starting to encircle them in a closing net of dead flesh. Danny knelt by Willie, checking the man's status. He had ten separate abdominal wounds where the buckshot had penetrated through from back to front. It was very gruesome and hard to watch the once-feared hitman laying critically wounded in a pool of his own blood, taken down finally by the likes of Jonah.
"You're a tough son of a bitch," Danny whispered into Willie's ear. "And I need people like that." On a split-second decision, he grabbed up the wounded man and slung him over his shoulder, dropping his rifle carelessly and began running toward town with Willie in tow, the others following and providing cover fire.
"Danny, what the hell are you getting yourself into?" he whispered to himself, as he ran and ran. Straight into Hell itself, in the form of Rutledgeville, North Carolina.